


polaroids and postcards

by kathillards



Category: Power Rangers, Power Rangers Megaforce
Genre: F/F, F/M, Multi, ot3 fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-12
Updated: 2015-10-12
Packaged: 2018-04-26 00:55:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4983640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kathillards/pseuds/kathillards
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She’s been taking pictures of flowers and trees and the sky her whole life, but it’s not until she falls in love that she starts understanding why people like to take photographs of other people so much. ―- TroyEmmaGia</p>
            </blockquote>





	polaroids and postcards

**Author's Note:**

> i've been bitten by the ot3 bug so you all get to deal with my love for the megaforce kids and especially the megaforce kids making out and banging each other.
> 
> takes place...whenever. idk there's not really a plot just fluff, enjoy.

She’s been taking pictures of flowers and trees and the sky her whole life, but it’s not until she falls in love that she starts understanding why people like to take photographs of other people so much.

-:-

It’s spur of the moment, the first time she snaps a picture of them in bed. Her camera is on the desk and she comes out of the bathroom after a shower to find Troy and Gia curled up together, kissing and giggling, and they both look so content, she can’t help but want to capture the moment.

“Hey,” Gia says, noticing her first, “what are you doing?”

Emma looks down at her camera for a second, a smile blooming on her face as she studies the picture. The light yellow blankets cover up most of their bodies, but Troy has his head bent towards Gia’s, whispering something in her ear that makes them both laugh. Her hair is wild and curly over her shoulders and his hair is a mess, ruffled up from sex, but their eyes are dancing and they both look beautiful.

“Nothing,” she says, smiling at their curious faces as she sets her camera back down. “You guys just looked cute.”

Troy laughs, extending a hand towards her. “Well, come join us,” he says, flashing her the smile that always makes her weak in the knees. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

“Yeah, how long does it take you to shower, Emma?” Gia jokes as Emma accepts Troy’s hand and lets him pull her onto the bed with them. She picks up a pillow and tosses it lightly at Gia, making her laugh.

“Excuse me, this hair takes a lot of effort,” Emma huffs, flipping her damp curls to prove it, then bursts into giggles when Troy darts a hand out over her waist, tickling her until she falls over on top of him. “ _Hey_!”

“Come here,” Gia says with a grin, and leans over Troy to kiss her. Emma melts into her kiss, and Troy’s touches, and the camera seems like a distant memory compared to their bed.

-:-

Three days later, she has the photograph developed and sitting in her personal scrapbook of favorite photos, which consists mostly of the two of them and the rest of their friends, but she’s almost forgotten about it when she gets hit with the urge again.

This time, it’s when they’re lying on the couch, not watching a Lifetime movie, and Gia is sprawled out with her head on Troy’s lap and her feet in Emma’s. His hands are running through her blonde curls, unerringly gentle as he smooths out the tangles, and Gia is smiling up at him brilliantly, practically purring under his touch.

Emma leans over to grab her camera where she’d left it on the coffee table after returning from her afternoon hike and aims it at them. The photograph snaps just as Troy’s dimples appear when he grins down at Gia, his fingers twirling a loose curl, and her hand hooked into his belt buckle right before she tugs him down for a kiss.

When they surface a few moments later, Troy looks up at Emma first, a laugh in his voice as he asks, a little breathlessly, “Are you just going to take pictures or actually join us?”

“Yeah, what are you taking pictures of, anyway?” Gia asks, reaching a hand out for the camera, which Emma lifts out of her way. “Em- _ma_.”

“Nothing,” she laughs, placing the camera back on the coffee table before shifting Gia’s feet to the armrest and sliding over so she’s pressed up against Troy, who smiles at her. “What are you two up to?”

“We were thinking about going to the beach,” he tells her, leaning over to brush kisses against her cheek, soft and feather-light, just the way she likes them. “Tomorrow, maybe? We could invite the others.”

“Or we could just go on our own,” Gia suggests brightly, playing with the bracelets on Emma’s hands as she drums a pattern over Gia’s skin underneath her shirt.

“She just wants us all to herself,” Troy mock-whispers in Emma’s ear, making her giggle. Gia frees a hand to smack him but grins cheekily up at them without denying it.

Emma leans her head on Troy’s shoulder, thinking about the beach and the sunshine and all the pictures she could take. “Sounds good to me,” she says with a smile, catching Gia’s hand and tugging her up to a sitting position on Troy’s lap. “Now, what are we gonna do with the rest of today?”

“Oh,” Troy grins, sliding his arm around Gia’s waist, “I think we can come up with something.”

-:-

At the beach, their favorite, secluded beach where they can comfortably be together without caring about onlookers, she takes a million photos of the way the waves look crashing over the shore, blue and white and glittering under the sun, until Troy’s voice in her ear interrupts her.

“Emma, how many pictures of the sea can you possibly take?” he asks, laughing when she jumps and whirls on him. He doesn’t sound annoyed, only amused, but she reaches up on her tiptoes to kiss the smile off his face anyway.

“Would you rather I take pictures of you?” she retorts, lifting her camera to snap a quick photo of his face right after she pulls back, when he’s still all dazed and looking at her like he can’t believe she’s real.

“Don’t you do that, anyway?” he says, rolling his eyes, though there’s still a grin on his face, and then stumbles when Gia jumps onto his back, having finished applying her sunscreen.

“Do what?” Gia asks, looping her arms around his neck and nuzzling her face against his head as Emma steps back with a laugh to let him find his balance. “Oh, the pictures thing? Yeah, are you ever gonna show us the ones you keep snapping of us?”

Emma looks contemplatively at her camera, then beams up at Gia. “Sure. Say cheese!” she says, putting the camera up to her eye and snapping five shots in succession of the two of them before Troy can finish a protest.

“Oh, for god’s sake, give me that,” he says quickly, reaching out to pluck the camera from her hands.

“Hey!” Emma says in concern, jumping to get it back, but he holds it out of her reach with a smirk. “Be _careful_ with that, it was expensive!”

“I’m always careful,” Troy grins, then aims it at her. “Smile, Emma.”

“Troy, no!” she says, but she’s giggling as she tries to dodge the camera lens, ducking out of the way and then around them, but Troy spins around, following her with remarkable ease, considering Gia on his back cheering him on.

“Hey, let me have a turn,” Gia says after he gets at least ten photos of Emma running around the beach, and he hands it up to her as she frees a hand from his neck to take it.

“Come here,” he adds to Emma while Gia studies the camera settings, looping an arm around her waist and dragging her back to him despite her half-hearted attempts to fight him through her laughter. “Give her a good picture,” he says teasingly, lowering his head to kiss her.

“ _Troy_!” Emma giggles, turning her head so he only gets her cheek. He pouts at her and she flicks him on the chest. “Give me back my camera, you weirdos.”

“Say _cheese_!” Gia sing-songs, and this time Troy catches her by surprise with a kiss as the camera clicks to take a picture of them. Emma steals her camera back when he breaks the kiss and dances off before either of them can get her to come back so she can secure it safely in her bag.

“We’re going out to the water!” Troy calls, Gia waving to her as they head over to the sea. “Meet you out there?”

Emma waves back. “I’ll be there in a sec!” She watches them run off  for a minute, their laughter loud enough to hear over the distance, and smiles to herself.

Later, as she looks over all the photos she took that day, she finds her favorites are the ones of them – Troy with Gia on his back, Troy throwing her over his shoulder out in the ocean, Gia posing against the sunset for her, Troy flexing his muscles for fun, and even the ones they took of her, the ones where she’s laughing as she tries to run from Troy, the one Gia took of her and Troy kissing with their eyes closed and the wind blowing their hair.

She doesn’t tell them, but she gets all the pictures developed, even the ones of hers, to put in her scrapbook and look at when she wants to smile.

-:-

“Did you find that flower you were looking for the other day?” Gia asks her one lazy Sunday afternoon while they’re lying in bed together, tangled up beneath the sheets. “You went on that hike for, like, three hours.”

“Oh, yeah!” Emma says, reaching over to get her camera out of the drawer on the bedside table. “I totally forgot, I was so exhausted when I came home, but they turned out great. Here, look.”

She scrolls to the photos of the flower and offers Gia the camera to see them. “I’m gonna go in to get them developed tomorrow.”

“Emma, they’re beautiful,” Gia says, smiling as she looks through the photos. “All your pictures are beautiful, though.”

Emma laughs, leaning over to kiss her. “Thanks,” she sighs into the kiss. “I’ve been doing so much work for my photography internship, it’s nice to get some free time to take my own personal pictures.”

“Mm,” Gia hums against her lips. “And free time to do other things,” she adds with a grin, lifting a hand to tangle in Emma’s curls. “Like right now.”

“Exactly,” Emma giggles, and loses herself in Gia’s kisses for a moment. “Speaking of right now,” she says when they pull apart, turning over her shoulder to frown at the door to the bathroom where she can still hear the water running. “What’s taking Troy so long? I can’t believe you guys complain about _my_ showers.”

Gia snorts, giving her the camera back so she can stretch languidly on the bed. “He has to put a lot of product in his hair to get it all pretty and stylish, it’s okay,” she says, winking.

“I heard that!” Troy says from inside the bathroom, his voice muffled through the door, but clearly still laughing. The water does come to a stop, though. Emma trades a look with Gia and starts giggling.

Gia leans over to whisper to her right before he emerges from the bathroom, “You should take a picture of this. He looks good when he’s wet.”

Emma grins. “Don’t I know it,” she agrees, lifting her camera up just as the door swings open and Troy comes out in a towel, looking exactly as good as Gia said, with his hair plastered to his forehead and water clinging to his skin. Her camera clicks, managing to get in two shots before he notices.

“ _Hey_!” he protests, adjusting the towel at his waist. She takes another shot and he flushes red. “ _Emma_ , stop that!”

“But you look so cute,” she teases, tilting the camera for a vertical, full-body shot as Gia leans over her shoulder to watch, her body shaking with laughter. Troy stands there, flustered, unable to find a place to hide in time, since the bed gives Emma a great view of the whole room.

“This should definitely go on Instagram,” Gia grins, wrapping her arms around Emma’s waist and pressing her chin to her shoulder as Troy pulls one of his shirts off a hanger and throws it in the direction of the camera.

“Do _not_ ,” he says in alarm, making both of them giggle again. He reaches for his towel to change, and then pauses. “Emma…”

She pouts at him over the top of her camera. “What, you don’t want all our classmates to see how good you look naked?”

Troy points a finger at her. “I swear to god, Emma, I will take that camera and put it on the highest shelf in this house if you _dare_.”

She knows he would, too, so she reluctantly drops the camera onto the blankets covering her lap and raises her hands in surrender. “All right, fine. You win.”

“Thank you,” he mutters, but there’s a smile twitching at his lips as he drops the towel and turns to grab his jeans from the closet. Emma glances over at Gia, who’s watching the show in interest, and stifles a laugh.

“Well,” Gia sighs, resting her head on Emma’s shoulder, “at least _we_ get to see him naked.”

“Mm,” Emma agrees, grinning at Troy when he sends them a fondly exasperated look over his shoulder. “It’s a nice view.”

“Shut up,” he mutters, though there’s a grin evident in his voice. “Have you guys seen my red shirt with the lightning bolt on it?”

Emma looks down at herself. “Um.”

Troy rolls his eyes. “You need to stop stealing my clothes,” he tells her, but he’s laughing as he turns back to find another shirt. Emma quickly raises her camera again and takes another picture before he can notice or stop her.

“ _Emma_!” he cries, whirling around to glower at her, though the effect is kind of marred by the shirt he has halfway over his body. She drops the camera back down and smiles innocently at him while Gia laughs. Troy tugs his shirt on properly and marches over to the bed, and she hastily covers the camera up with blankets before he can reach it.

“I’m gonna get you back for that,” he says, leaning over close enough to kiss her but not closing the gap as she tries not to laugh in his face. “You better not put those on Instagram.”

“I promise I won’t put them on Instagram,” she intones solemnly, giggling when he rolls his eyes again and pulling him in for a kiss to distract him from the photos.

The distraction works, because he completely fails to notice that Gia never made any such promises.

-:-

She only lets Gia post one photo on Instagram, the one where he’s in a towel looking like a soaked puppy and smiling all embarrassed when he notices the camera, and keeps the rest for them to giggle over and put in her scrapbook, alongside cut-outs of paper hearts and lipstick marks just so he’ll blush when he sees it.

“I don’t know, I really liked the one of his back,” Gia says thoughtfully, looking over the developed pictures as they sit at a table at their favorite outdoor beach café, waiting for Troy. “It’s so artistic, you know?”

Emma grins, picking up a breadstick from the basket in the center and breaking it in half for the two of them. She trades one breadstick half with Gia for the picture in question – a full body shot of Troy from the back, his bare skin still dripping water, his jeans slung low on his hips, and his hair all messed up.

“You’re right, but he – ” she begins to say, but her attention breaks when Troy jogs up the street to join them, his hair and clothes soaked and a grin on his face as he comes to a stop at their table. “Uh, did you just run across the _entirety_ of Harwood County?”

He glances down at his body, looking almost surprised. “Oh, this? No, it’s only half sweat, I promise. I took a break to get in the water at the beach because it was really nice today.”

Gia pouts at him. “Without us?”

Troy shoots her a smile. “Next time, I promise,” he assures her, and then reaches back and tugs his shirt off from the neck. It sticks to his skin, and he has to drag it up carefully, revealing his abs inch by tortous inch. Emma stares at him for a moment, then looks at Gia, who looks as equally turned on as she feels.

“Did you guys order already?” he asks, draping the shirt over the back of his chair once it’s finally off and sitting down with them. “You didn’t forget my shrimp alfredo, did you?”

“No,” Emma says slowly, because it’s hard to concentrate when he’s sitting next to her half-naked and _wet_. “We remembered your order, don’t worr—” This time, she cuts herself off because he leans casually across her to take her menu from her other side, his arm muscles gleaming with water under the sunlight. “What the _hell_ , Troy?”

“What?” Troy grins at her, pulling his arm back and opening up the menu. Emma blinks and then jams her hand at his shoulder, nearly shoving him off his chair. He rebalances quickly and smiles mischievously at her. “Thought you _liked_ me shirtless and wet, Emma.”

Gia throws out an arm to stop Emma from leaping at him. “Em, we’re in public.”

“Fine,” Emma huffs, sitting back down and tearing off a piece of breadstick to throw at him as he laughs. “I’ll just wait till we get home.”

-:-

She wakes up the next morning to the sound of her camera clicking. When she opens her eyes, Troy is standing in front of their bed, looking at the photo he’s just taken of her and Gia curled up together under the blankets. Emma throws a pillow at him.

“You’re not allowed to touch my camera!” she insists as he catches the pillow with a grin and tosses it back at her. “Troy, give that _back_!”

“All right,” he says, smirking, and sets the camera carefully on the dresser, which she appreciates. “I already took photos on my phone, too.”

Emma groans and sinks back down onto the pillow as Troy saunters out, laughing to himself. She debates throwing a pillow at his back, but he’d probably still manage to catch it, damn him.

“We have the most annoying boyfriend,” she complains to Gia when she stirs from her sleep. “Also, you should post the other picture on Instagram.”

Gia blinks sleepily at her and says, not even sounding surprised, “What did he do this time?”

-:-

The picture is actually really nice, when she finally looks at it on her camera. Gia’s head is tucked into her shoulder, her hair a halo of gold around them, and Emma’s arm is draped over her waist, a soft smile on her face from a dream she’s already forgotten. She knows Troy arranged the blankets to cover them up because they always got messed up in the night, which makes the picture even sweeter.

“Are you guys done with this now?” Gia asks with a sigh, leaning back into Emma’s chest as Emma carefully braids flowers into her hair. “Not that I mind the pictures, but you two are very annoying when you’re trying to be mad at each other.”

“We are not,” Troy and Emma say at the same time, then pause and look at each other. Gia sighs again, more dramatically this time, as Emma breaks down in giggles.

“Whatever,” Troy laughs, going back to his kata practice instead of watching Emma do Gia’s hair. “You don’t post any more photos of me half-naked for everyone in our school to see, and I won’t post the bed photo, deal?”

“Honestly, Gia was the one who posted it,” Emma says, smiling at her girlfriend. “Why aren’t you mad at her?”

“I am,” Troy says, raising an eyebrow at them. Gia sticks her tongue out. “And I’ll get her back, don’t worry.”

“Oh, I’d like to see you try,” Gia scoffs, then winces. “Emma, not so hard!”

“Sorry,” Emma says, smoothing out the tangle her finger had caught. “Fine, we’re agreed. No more photos on Instagram – unless they’re really cute.”

Troy stops in the middle of a kata to pick up his water bottle and roll his eyes at her. “Yeah? How cute?”

Emma hums thoughtfully as she places a flower crown over Gia’s flower braids, fluffing out her curls to complete the look. “Like, kitten videos levels of cute? Like the way you look right after sex.”

Troy snorts. “You’re hilarious,” he says, flicking water at them as Emma giggles. “How about this level of cute?”

Before Emma can ask him what he’s doing or Gia can jump up to stop him, he grabs his phone out of his backpack and aims it at them. The camera flashes and Emma can’t fight her smile – this picture will have Gia in a flower crown, so she can’t be mad at him for preserving the memory.

Troy grins at them over his phone. “You forgot to smile, Gia.”

“I’m going to murder you,” Gia tells him, but Emma locks her arms around her and keeps her still. “Emma, what the hell, let me at him!”

“No, he can’t die until I see that photo,” Emma says, pressing her chin to Gia’s shoulder and kissing her quickly on the cheek to calm her down. “Come on, you look beautiful.”

“I look like a flower princess,” Gia grumbles, but relaxes back into Emma’s arms. “Hey, if I see that on Instagram, I’m throwing out all your bottles of hair product, Burrows.”

“You say that every other week,” Troy says dismissively. He winks at Emma and holds up his phone again. “Could you kiss her one more time? This last one came out blurry.”

-:-

She knows Gia’s going to get revenge for that, especially since Troy captioned the photo with ‘ _Look at how beautiful our flower princess is’_ and it has fifty likes last time she checked, but she hadn’t thought Gia would actually take a picture of them in the shower, which is sneaky, even for her.

“ _Gia_!” she shrieks when the camera goes off to the sound of Gia’s laughter and Troy’s bemused noise at having their kiss broken. “What are you _doing_?”

“You guys think you’re really funny, so,” Gia grins wickedly and takes another photo as Emma ducks behind Troy to avoid it, “The guys are gonna love this one. Say cheese!”

“Gia,” Troy says, though he’s laughing, the _traitor_. At least he lets her use his arm as a shield. “Come on, you’re not actually gonna post that.”

“Don’t worry,” Gia says, waving the phone at them with a smirk. “You can’t _see_ anything. Completely PG-13, promise.”

“That’s not the _point_!” Emma insists, shaking Troy’s arm so he’ll _do_ something instead of just grinning at Gia. “ _Troy_ , make her delete the photos!”

“I hate to say it, Emma,” he says in a voice so amused it belies his words, “but I think you started a war.”

Gia blows them a kiss and dances out of the bathroom. The picture, thankfully, doesn’t show up on Instagram proper, but Gia does manage to get it printed out somehow to put in Emma’s scrapbook, despite her protests, and surrounds it with an elaborate display of kiss mark and winky face stickers.

“You have to admit,” Troy says, leaning over her shoulder to look at the picture later, “it’s kind of nice.”

Emma hits him, but she smiles anyway. “So, you’re okay with naked pictures of us being in this scrapbook?”

Troy sighs dramatically. “As long as nobody else gets to see you naked.”

He kisses her cheek and leaves her to flip through the scrapbook. He’s not wrong about the picture – once she gets over the embarrassment, it’s actually a well-done shot, especially coming from an iPhone camera, and Gia, of course, has cut it out into a heart shape. If it weren’t for the wetness of their hair and the soap clinging to the bits of bare skin that you can see at the bottom of the picture, you might not even be able to tell they’re kissing in the shower.

Emma is smiling when she closes the scrapbook, but that doesn’t mean she’s not going to get her back.

-:-

The next photo that shows up on Instagram is Gia wearing one of Troy’s old shirts as she paints, courtesy of Emma, which earns her an affronted, “Now everyone will know I _paint_ , Emma!”

“And… also you’re not wearing anything under the shirt?” Troy prompts.

Gia looks at him for a second, then shakes her head. “Nah,” she says, and goes to squeeze a tube of paint out on Emma’s head, which ends up with all of them covered in paint.

-:-

Troy steals a shot of the two of them making out on Emma’s bike next, explaining himself with, “Hey, I haven’t taken one in a while, I figured it was my turn.”

“We are not doing _turns_ ,” Emma protests as Gia snatches his phone to see the photo for herself. “That has too much glare,” she points out, looking over Gia’s shoulder. The sunshine is blinding around them, filling the photo with white light, though it doesn’t distract much from the shot of Gia straddling her on the bike, kissing her heatedly.

“Well, we can’t all be professional photographers,” Troy teases, tweaking one of her curls as he takes his phone back. “This is going in the scrapbook.”

“I decide what goes in the scrapbook,” Emma complains, though she knows she’s already lost the fight from the way Gia is smiling at her.

-:-

She takes a photo of Troy and Gia cuddling in the hot tub, which turns out really pretty with the lights of the night sky up above and the city below them and Troy with his arm draped around the back of the tub and smiling as Gia leans over to kiss him – so she posts that one on Instagram, too.

“I actually like this one,” Troy admits when he sees it. Gia rolls her eyes, but she kisses Emma, so she figures Gia likes it as well.

Of course, that doesn’t stop Gia from snapping a photo of Emma sitting in Troy’s lap feeding him grapes on their picnic date and putting on Instagram. Troy counters with a picture of the two of them dancing around in their living room after having too much wine one night, and Emma, of course, has to take a picture of him working out shirtless in revenge.

“Guess we are doing turns,” Gia laughs as the three of them lie in bed together, scrolling through Emma’s phone to look at the comments on her pictures of Troy. “Am I next?”

“Can it wait till tomorrow?” Troy asks, stifling a yawn as he leans over to take the phone and turn it off. “I don’t need to know what Jenna from your internship thinks about my abs, Emma.”

“She likes them,” she informs him brightly. He pokes her in the ribs and she giggles, batting his hand away. “All right,” she agrees, turning off the bedside lamp and curling up into his chest. “No more till tomorrow. And you are _not_ allowed to take more shower photos, Gia!”

“Who, me?” Gia asks innocently, sliding her arms around Emma’s waist from behind and kissing her neck. “I would never.”

Emma rolls her eyes as Troy chuckles and presses a kiss to her temple, then Gia’s. “Good _night_ ,” she says firmly.

“Good night,” Gia hums in the manner of someone planning a conspiracy. Emma sighs deeply, but she’s smiling as she falls asleep.

-:-

Her scrapbook gets filled and they have to buy another one to accommodate all their photos, but she doesn’t really mind. Looking at Troy and Gia smiling, at herself smiling when she’s around them, somehow feels even better than all the pictures of all the pretty flowers in the world.


End file.
